Hob
Amy Chua comes from a background that by academic standards, would most probably make you go limp: her dad is currently a an electrical engineering and computer sciences prof at Berkeley, is called the ‘father of non linear circuit theory and cellular neural networks’, and is also the inventor of the Chua’s circuit. He was also the first person to theorize and postulate the existence of the solid state memristor.
Amy, to play catch up, is currently a professor of law at Yale Law, taught at Duke Law, was a law associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton (which has accomplished numerously important law stuff), graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Economics from Harvard, and obtained her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law. Oh and she was an executive editor of the Harvard Law Review. And her husband is a bestselling law professor at Yale as well, with a resume to match that of his wife’s. And one of her sisters is a professor at Stanford. And her other sister is a two-time international Special Olympics gold medal winner.
I have not a slightest of clues as to what any of that means actually means but it sounds impressive.
But grade A mother? Not according to many.
Amy Chua recently released a memoir entitled “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”. The buzz it has generated has mostly stemmed from her views on parenting and, according to her, the style of the typical Chinese parent (she uses the term ‘Chinese mother’ very loosely and uses it to refer to moms of all backgrounds that place an anvil sized emphasis on education and violin awesomeness and ‘western mother’ as someone not like that).
To give you a taste of how she raised her two (extremely accomplished) daughters, they could never have a sleep over, watch TV or play games, were not allowed to choose their own extracurricular activities, get a grade less than an A, not be the number 1 student in every subject (except for gym and drama), and could only play either the violin or piano. Oh, and they were never allowed to complain either.
The daughters were expected to come home every night and devote every waking hour to either books or their instruments, they were expected to never fail, and it was normal to hear such comments as “you’re getting fat, lose some weight” and Chua has called her daughter garbage… at a dinner party… in front of other guests.
Now, to the best of my knowledge, I am not a mother. I never have been a mother and the most parenting experience I’ve ever had involves a puppy that my sister raised. And I don’t plan on having any lil’ Hob’s and Hobbettes for the next foreseeable future, but my goodness, I think if I were to raise a child, this way wouldn’t be it.
But before any comments and criticisms are made towards any parenting style, I think it is very important to remember that there is no one, correct, universal way of being a parent. A parenting style is just that, a style. It will differ based on each mom and dad, and even more so between parents of different cultural backgrounds. Chua’s way is not the correct way. Nor is my mothers, or your mothers. And that’s simply because there is no such thing as a correct way.
But is her style the style I would use?
Oh good gracious me no.
Throughout Chua’s essay, the main, underlying point used throughout is the western mom’s emphasis on effort and the Chinese moms’ desire to have the best results. Through nonstop, repetitive (rote) learning, the Chinese mother’s kids must be the best, because anything less than would be absolutely catastrophic. They must achieve absolute perfection absolutely every time without absolutely corrupting their learning with nonsensical garbage. Like gym. Or hanging out with friends. They must keep their pedals to the academic metal from the moment they can crawl.
And this bothers me to no end.
To enforce my (nonexistent) parenting skills on the world, I think what Chua fails to recognize is that one’s worth and success should not and cannot be determined by the letters on their report cards. As much as some of us might like to believe, life is not governed by the academic transcript or the name of the school on the diploma. It certainly is important and will help open many doors, but open doors will exist whether you’re an engineer or engineering technician.
But more importantly, Chua fails to realize that maybe her kids want to be just kids. You’re only a kid once. Only within this small window of life called childhood are you allowed to not have any responsibilities, maybe except learning to color within the lines. The burdens of being a grown up with responsibilities and the pressure to do well academically will come inevitably, there is no stopping it. But to place tear-inducing pressures on a child to get straight A’s is something that a child can do without. And the lack of straight A’s won’t turn your child into lifelong slackers (which according to Chua is probably anything less than being a doctor).
And of course, Chua never touches on the darker side of all this constant pressure to be nothing but the best. The emotional and psychological toll that comes along with the never ending pursuit of perfection cannot be anything other than painstakingly burdensome. I’m no Freud, but you cannot tell me that there is no correlation between teen suicide rates and this parenting style.
Your best effort might make you the best in class at solving a triple integral, or it might not. But there is more to life than just grades. And a C grade, or even an F grade or two, isn’t the end of the world.
It could be my cultural upbringing, but life is short. And because the many stages of our lives are even that much shorter, the constant urge to go balls to the wall might make one forget to stop and actually bounce that ball around. It’s fun.
And that’s the biggest difference between Chua and myself: life should be fun.
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